Mellon no longer blinked when Chester did things like that. Sitting back, half-smiling out the windshield as he took the vodka bottle from the pocket in the door, he said, “Couple pass a gravestone, says, ‘Here lies John Jones, a lawyer and an honest man.’ Girl says, ‘Is that legal, three men in one grave?’”

•

When Chester drooped into his house at four-thirty, Hal’s baseball teams and frogmen fading slowly from his brain, Dortmunder himself was seated in Chester’s living room, on Chester’s sofa, watching Chester’s television set, and wearing Chester’s overcoat and, apparently, nothing else. “What the hell is this?” Chester demanded.

“Disaster,” Dortmunder told him, and gestured at the screen.

Chester moved around the room to where he could see the television screen. Between the crawl at the bottom of the picture and the CNN logo and some other stuff at the top was a photo of a hangdog-looking guy in black suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie, giving the camera a distrustful look. “That’s you,” Chester said.

“They made us take mug shots when we got the jobs,” Dortmunder said. “Tiny was gonna cop them when we left.”

“Missing butler,” Chester read from the crawl, then gave Dortmunder-in-the-flesh the once-over. “Missing clothes, too, I see,” he said. “Where are they?”

“In your drier,” Dortmunder said. “They used to be in your washing machine. But I need something except that suit, I can’t wear that suit after it’s been all over CNN. Two, three billion people have now seen that suit.”

“There’s also the face,” Chester pointed out.

“I can squint or wear glasses or something. Listen, Chester, I couldn’t call over to the compound because maybe the wrong person says hello, recognizes my voice. You could call.”

“Why?”

“Find Andy or Tiny or somebody. Get my clothes from the house there. I can’t go back there anyway, the cops’d ask me questions for a year. I thought I’d wait till the cars moved tonight, but I can’t sit here in your overcoat like this.”

“I agree.”

“So maybe somebody could bring my stuff over to me now. Is that asking too much?”

“I’ll find out,” Chester said, and made the call, and somebody with nails in his throat said, “Front gate.”

“I’m looking for, uh, Fred Blanchard.”

“He’s at his house, I’ll forward you.”

Waiting, Chester said to Dortmunder, “Calls didn’t used to get answered at the front gate. Suppose something’s happening over there?”

“Yes,” Dortmunder said.

It was Kelp who answered the phone, sounding aggravated: “Yeah?”

“An—I mean, Fred, it’s Chester.”

“I don’t care what you call me.”

“Listen, I got John here, over at my house, you know what I mean?”

“John? There? What’s he doing there?”

“Sitting in my overcoat. He says would one of you guys bring him his stuff from his room, he isn’t going back over there.”

“Good idea,” Kelp said, though he sounded angry when he said it. “We’ll bring everybody’s stuff. See you in a little while.”

Chester hung up, and Dortmunder nodded at the screen, saying, “They got one of them.”

The photo on the screen now was of a very upright businessman type in a suit and tie—a corporate headshot. The off-camera announcer was saying, “Forty-two-year-old Mark Sterling, now in police custody, has admitted his part in the kidnapping. One other alleged perpetrator, a business associate of Mark Sterling’s named Osbourne Faulk, is said by police to have fled the country. Another three conspirators are thought to have been involved, but little is known of them except that they are alleged to have belonged to the same labor union.”

“There you go,” Dortmunder said. “Now the kidnappers got a union.”

65

“LITTLE IS KNOWN OF US,” Mac said. “You hear that?”

“We’re royally screwed,” Ace insisted. “That guy Faulk was right. What we gotta do is flee the country.”

“To where?” Mac wanted to know. “And using what for cash? We wouldn’t last a week, Ace, in some foreign country, and once they look at us and start to wonder how come we’re on the lam, then we are screwed.”

The television had moved on to commercials. “More beer,” Buddy said, offed the set, and got heavily to his feet. So far, he hadn’t come down on one side or the other in the current dispute over whether, in the current crisis, they should (1) vamoose, or (2) do nothing.

They were in Buddy’s rec room again, and with some trepidation they’d been watching CNN on the old rabbit-ears antenna television set against the unfinished wall under the big silk banner that lived here when it wasn’t being used at union rallies or on picket lines. Against a royal blue background, the bright yellow words curved above and below the initials:

Amalgamated Conglomerated Workers

ACWFFA

Factory Floor Alliance

As Buddy went to the World War II refrigerator for some up-to-date beer, Ace said, “If that guy Faulk thinks he oughta run, we oughta listen. Those were smart guys, educated guys, remember? Harvard, or maybe Buddy’s right, Dartmouth, but not dummies.”

Passing right over the blatant attempt to suck up to the uncommitted Buddy, “One of them’s arrested,” Mac pointed out, “which is how smart he is. And the other one skipped because Mark knows him and can identify him, and according to the TV, Mark even gave the cops Osbourne Faulk’s name.”

Buddy, distributing cans of beer and resuming his seat, said, “Not a good way to treat a pal.”

“And the point is,” Mac said, “if he’d give them Faulk, he’d give them us twice as fast but he didn’t. And you know why?”

“They didn’t get around to it yet,” Ace said.

“Oh, they got around to it,” Mac said. “Little is known of us, that’s what the guy said, except we’re in the same union together.”

“Which means,” Ace said, “they know enough that they’re probably already on the way. Canada, Mac, we could disappear in Canada.”

“They’re not on the way,” Mac insisted, “because Mark doesn’t know our names.”

“Sure he does,” Ace said.

Pointing at each of them, and then at himself, Mac said, “Ace, Buddy, Mac. That’s not name enough to lead anybody to us.”

Buddy said, “Mac, they knew my name, from the registration on the car.”

“Faulk did,” Mac said, “and he’s fled. Ace, if you make a move, you’ll just draw attention to us.”

Looking around, Buddy said, “Come to think of it, you know, I can’t go anywhere until I finish this room.”

“Exactly,” Mac said, and that took care of that.

66

DORTMUNDER WAS DRINKING COFFEE, though what he would rather be drinking was anything that started with “B.” But tonight was when, at long last, the heist would go down, and he should be at his quick-witted best for the occasion. Some time after midnight, with Tiny alone on guard duty at the entrance to the compound and with the cops gone from the place because the kidnapping was over and solved and done with, at last they could go in and get the goddamn cars and deliver them to the Speedshop. And then Dortmunder could get out of Pennsylvania, back to New York, back to a cozy living room with his faithful companion, May, and drink everything in the house that started with “B.” Something to look forward to. In the meantime, he was seated here in Chester’s living room, with Chester and his faithful companion, Grace, all of them drinking coffee and waiting for Dortmunder’s clothes to get here. Chester’s overcoat wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really fit all that well, and it was uncomfortable having to worry about your coat tails all the time.

They’d stopped watching television, because it was obvious the story was over, even though the newspeople were prepared to go on beating it into the ground for several hours yet. Monroe Hall had been kidnapped, then found, then found to have lost his memory. His butler had been kidnapped with him, and was now disappeared. One of the five kidnappers had been nabbed, one had skipped the country, and the other three would never be rounded up unless they put signs on their backs saying, “I did it.” So it was over, all except the swiping of the cars.